Communication - May, 2006
from Jerry Baldasty, chair

[Download a Microsoft Word version of the May, 2006 "Communication"]

Save the Date

May 20, Saturday. Crowell Fund Run. Green Lake, 10 am.

May 30, Tuesday. Graduate student research poster session. 6-8 pm, Room 126. The posters focus on current graduate student research.

June 1, Thursday, Graduate Student Recognition Celebration
3:30-4:30 pm, Cmu. 126.

June 1, Thursday, Excellence in Communication, 6-8 pm, Kane Hall 210.

June 8. Thursday, Department graduation celebration, 11:30 to 2:30, HUB Ballroom.

Research

Amman, John, Tris Carpenter, and Gina Neff, editors, Surviving the New Economy.
Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers. Forthcoming Fall 2006.

Neff, Gina. “The Lure of Risk: Surviving and Welcoming Uncertainty in the New Economy,” in John Amman, Tris Carpenter, and Gina Neff, eds. Surviving the New Economy. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers. Forthcoming Fall 2006.

Rivenburgh, N.K. (2006). "For the Cinderella of the New South, the Shoe Just Didn't Fit: the 'most exceptional' Games of 1996." In A. Bernstein, H.J. Stiehler, & W. Kleinwaechter (Eds.). Olympic Cities and the Media (Comparative Cultural Studies Series). West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press.

Warnick, B. (2006). "Rhetoric on the Web," in Digital Media; Transformations in Human Communication, eds. Paul Messaris and Lee Humphreys. (New York: Peter Lang Publishing), pp. 139-146.

Warnick, B. (in press) Rhetoric Online: The Arts of Persuasion on the World Wide Web. New York: Peter Lang Publishing. (Due out in Spring 2007)

Underwood, D. “Depression, Drink, and Dissipation: The Troubled Inner World of the Literary Journalists and Art as the Ultimate Stimulant.” 2006. In press, Journalism History.

Kielbowicz, R. “The Law and Mob Law in Attacks on Antislavery Newspapers, 1833-1860,” Law and History Review (in press for 2006 publication). Preprint version.

Kielbowicz, R., “Preserving Universal Postal Service as a Communication Safety Net: A Policy History and Proposal,” Seton Hall Legislative Journal (in press for 2006 publication).

Domke, D. "Petitioners or prophets? Presidential discourse, God, and the ascendancy of religious conservatives," Journal of Communication, with former MA student Kevin Coe.

Kielbowicz, R. “Testing the Boundaries of Postal Enterprise in the U.S. Free-Market Economy, 1880-1920,” in The Post, Communication and Transport, ed. John Willis (Hull, Quebec: Canadian Museum of Civilization, in press 2006).

Moy, P. “Priming effects of late-night comedy." International Journal of Public Opinion Research, with former graduate students Michael Xenos (now at Wisconsin) and Verena Hess (now at Microsoft).

Moy, P. “Frame building and frame setting: The interplay between online public opinion and media coverage,” with former visiting graduate student Christina Zhou (now at Shenzhen University), for the International Communication Association.

Moy, P. “Media use, nationalism, and citizenship,” with graduate students Andrea Hickerson and Brandon Bosch, for the American Association for Public Opinion Research.

Underwood, D. “The Problem with Paul: Seeds of the Culture Wars and the Dilemma for Journalists.” 2006. In press, Journal of Media and Religion.

Underwood, D. “The Would-Be Novelist as Disgruntled Journalist: The Relationship between Literary Ambition and Journalists’ Job Satisfaction in the Newsroom.” 2006. First author with Dana Bagwell. In press, Newspaper Research Journal.

Thurlow, C. (2006 in press). From statistical panic to moral panic: The metadiscursive construction and popular exaggeration of new media language in the print media. Journal of Computer Mediated Communication, 11(4).

Aiello, G. & Thurlow, C. (2006 in press). “Symbolic capitals: Visual discourse and intercultural exchange in the European Capital of Culture scheme.” Language and Intercultural Communication, 6(2).

Thurlow, C. & Aiello, G. (2006 in press). “National pride, global capital: A social semiotic analysis of transnational visual branding in the airline industry.” Visual Communication, 5(3).

Gina Neff, Review of Bruce Kogut, ed., The Global Internet Economy, in Work & Occupations, 33 (2): 242, May 2006.

Thurlow, C. & Jaworski, A. (2006). “The alchemy of the upwardly mobile: Symbolic capital and the stylization of elites in frequent-flyer programmes.” Discourse & Society, 17(1), 131-167.

Gerry Philipsen, "In the Context of Devolution," appearing in John Wilson and Karyn Stapleton, Editors, Devolution and Identity, published by Ashgate Press, in England. This is an essay on the effects on everyday life of governmental devolution in the United Kingdom. Since 1997 many governmental powers have been transferred from the British Parliament to Parliaments and Assemblies in Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Philipsen's chapter is a review and analysis of a body of work that has been done that assesses the effect of these changes (at the national level) on the everyday lives of people.

A departmental work-in-progress colloquium focused on graduate student work. “The Message(s) of Contemporary Politics” featured the work of three Communication graduate students who had focused research on messages by and surrounding post-September 11 presidential politics. The presenters were: Sue Lockett John, “On the Message Road to Iraq: How an Echoing Press Followed the President's Lead,” Sheryl Cunningham, “Masculinity, Terrorism, and Partisan Identity in Post-September 11 Politics,” and Mary Lynn Veden, “Rewriting Reality, Resisting Authority: A Rhetorical Reading of the 2002 "Leaked" Memo from Alberto Gonzalez to George W. Bush.” Professor Mark Smith, Political Science and Communication, critiqued the work.

Wulff, D. H., & Nerad, M. (In press). Using an Alignment Model as a Framework in Assessment of Doctoral Programs. In P. L. Maki & N. Borkowski (Eds.), Assessing learning at the doctoral level. Sterling, VA: Stylus.

Underwood, D. “Transcending the Image of the Journalist as Infidel: Religious Ambivalence Among the Famous Journalist-Literary Figures and Their Pursuit of Unconventional Forms of Spiritual Practice.” To be presented to Society for the Scientific Study of Religion (SSSR) conference. October, 2006. Portland, Oregon.

Meg Spratt, April Peterson, and Taso Lagos, “Of Photographs and Flags: Uses and Perceptions of an Iconic Image Before and After September 11, 2001,” Popular Communication, 2005, 3(2), 117-136

“’Mediating Commons:’ Institutional Importance in the Diffusion of New Communication Technology in Rural Greece – An Ethnographic Case Study” by Taso G. Lagos, New Media & Society, in press.

“Politics, Media and Youth: Using Video Production to Teach Political Engagement in Secondary Schools,” by Kate Dunsmore, Taso Lagos and Carmen Rubio, Learning, Media and Technology, publication pending.

Underwood, D. “Religion's Traditional Pathways into the News Pages and the Transformation of the Environment for the Communication of Spiritual Matters in the Modern Media.” To be presented to Society for the Scientific Study of Religion Conference. October, 2006. Portland, Oregon. First author with Adrienne Massanari and Laura Busch.

Underwood, D. “The Literary Conscience and the Quest for Social Justice: The Proletariat Novel and the Populist Cause in Journalistic Literature.” Re-visiting The Jungle: Literary Journalism of the Last Century. Conference, Nancy, France, May, 2006.

Kielbowicz, R., entries on “The Telegraph and News,” “Amos Kendall,” and “Postal Acts of 1792, 1845, and 1879,” Encyclopedia of American Journalism History (New York: Routledge, in press).

Teaching Cultural Codes

The Department hosted a small conference on Teaching Cultural Codes: Communication, Culture, and Pedagogy, on April 10-11. The conference brought together eleven focal participants who were present at all sessions for presentations and discussions pertaining to the teaching of undergraduate courses and curricula in communication and culture from a cultural codes perspective that emphasizes diverse and distinctive ways of communicating within and across communities.

The eleven focal participants came from three different countries—the US, Germany, and Israel--and represent ten different academic institutions. Several UW people from Communication, Scandinavian Studies, the Information School, Anthropology, Education, Social Work, and Landscape Architecture also participated in the conference, including undergraduates, graduate students, and staff from across the University. There were, by design, scholars who approach the study of communication from a codes perspective.

Sessions included teaching intercultural communication from a codes perspective, undergraduate fieldwork research in communication and culture, teaching intercultural communication with simultaneous transmissions of communication from US classrooms to classrooms in any of several countries in Europe and the Middle East, indigenous film, and teaching of culture to students of translation and interpretation.

Director of the conference Professor Gerry Philipsen said that it brought together many people who had contributed to the body of scholarly knowledge we now have about communication from a cross-cultural perspective and that this was a truly international, multilingual, multicultural, and multimodal festival of inquiry and discussion pertaining to teaching communication and culture with undergraduates.

Crucial financial support was provided by the Earl and Edna Stice Lectureship in Social Science, the Graduate School, and the Simpson Center for the Humanities.

Gerry also organized a course and lecture series titled “Ways of Speaking.” Participants included Tamar Katriel, University of Haifa (“Cultural Ways of Speaking”), Kirt H. Wilson, University of Minnesota ("Mimesis, Race, and Civilization: Speaking a Black Intellectual Culture in the Late Nineteenth Century"), Valerie Manusov (“Nonverbal communication: Revelations of a cultural code"), Donal Carbaugh, University of Massachusetts (“Speaking in Silence and Ways of Speaking”) and Nancy Baym, University of Kansas ("Speaking of the Internet")

Place matters

On April 18, 2006, the UW Diversity Research Institute hosted a working day to prepare for its fall conference “Place Matters: Seeking Equity in a Diverse Society” (Oct. 27-28, 2006). Participants this spring included graduate students and faculty from across campus. The working day was meant to facilitate a preliminary exchange of ideas about and experiences of place-making practices, as these shape and are shaped by different approaches to cultural diversity and overall difference. Graduate students and faculty from a wide range of disciplines participated in the working meeting. Jerry Baldasty and graduate students Giorgia Aiello, Irina Gendelman and Kristin Gustafson represented the Department of Communication. As Giorgia, Irina and Kristin write, “It was a terrific opportunity to meet and talk about common concerns with such a diverse group of participants.”

Adobe Systems Gift

Many thanks to Adobe Systems for the generous gift of software to the MC Digital Media program Department of Communication and to MCDM student and Adobe employee Erica Schisler, Director, Program Management, Web, Video and Audio, for her leadership in facilitating this contribution.

The gift -- Adobe Design Bundles, Adobe Web Bundles, and Adobe Video Bundles -- provides Communication students with the latest web development, image and video software from Adobe. As a result, students will be creating projects with the same tools that they will use at media and non-media organizations after they graduate. Combined with the planned upgrade of hardware, this gift means that Communication will have the most up-to-date Windows multi-media production labs on campus.

The software will be installed in our open labs in rooms 302 and 304, our mac lab in 306, our advanced technology lab in 318E, and the graduate lab in 316.

Community Radio

The Department of Communication and the Center for Communication and Civic Engagement recently presented a one-day conference on “The Future of Community Radio: Participation and Policy.” Participants included Pete Tridish and Siyade Gemechisa of Prometheus Radio Project (a small grassroots non-profit organization that is a leader in both promoting Low Power FM by helping communities put small radio stations on the air and in successfully fighting media consolidation and other anti-democratic media trends), Karen Toering of Reclaim The Media (a Seattle based organization dedicated to pursuing a more just society by transforming our media system and expanding the communications rights of ordinary people through grassroots organizing, education, networking and advocacy), Peter Graff and Sabrina Roach of KBCS 91.3 FM Community Radio (a Bellevue Community College based Pacifica Radio Network affiliate), Chris Govella: of Rainy Dawg Radio University of Washington’s Student Internet Radio Station.

Thanks to Ted Coopman and Amoshaun Toft for their work in organizing the event.

People

Congratulations to David Domke, the 2006 recipient of the Krieghbaum Under 40 Award from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. The award honors AEJMC members under 40 years of age who have shown outstanding achievement and effort in teaching, research and public service. The late Hillier Krieghbaum, former New York University professor emeritus and 1972 AEJMC president, created and funded the award in 1980. In 1990, he further endowed the award, increasing its cash value to $1,000.

This is a significant award, and was based on a review of Dave’s record in research, teaching and service. Among those nominating him for the award were Professors Hazel Dicken Garcia (Minnesota), Dhavan Shah (Wisconsin-Madison), David Weaver (Indiana), Julie Andsager (Iowa) and Jerry Baldasty (Washington).

Dave's nomination materials noted his superb research and mentorship record, his 2001 UW Distinguished Teaching Award, his leadership in UW teaching/learning issues and workshops, and his public scholarship activity.

Lance Bennett has agreed to lead a MacArthur Foundation working group on digital media and youth civic engagement, which is part of the foundation's new initiative in digital media and learning. Lance has also received a grant from the Belgian Science Policy Foundation to participate in a comparative study of information and communication technologies and political activism.

Congratulations to Communication-Journalism major, Blythe Lawrence, who was one of the top ten finalists in the Hearst Spot News Writing Competition. This is a nationwide program with 105 accredited schools of undergraduate journalism participating. Blythe came in seventh and received $500.

Scott Turner Schofield, a transgender performance artist who is in residence in May at The Pat Graney Company and Hugo House, recently spoke in Ralina Joseph’s "Beyond the Binaries" class for a performance/talk.

Scott's Web site...

Crispin Thurlow gave a presentation recently on “New Media, New Language? Folk linguistics and communication technologies.” The talk, in a Linguistics Department colloquium, focused on some of Crispin’s recent research on print-media accounts of young people’s language-use in technologies such as instant messaging and text-messaging. He showed how certain language and communication practices are being institutionalized and understood through this type of everyday metadiscourse. (For example, the print media typically exaggerate the difference between technologically-mediated and non-mediated discourse, and consistently misrepresents the ‘evolutionary’ trajectory of language change. Professor Thurlow is particularly concerned with adult moralizing about the deleterious impact on language standards of new technologies and young people.)

John Gastil and Crispin Thurlow were both nominated this year for the Marsha Landolt Distinguished Graduate Mentor Award. The award went to Joel Migdal, Jackson School.

Maria Garrido has received a post-doctoral position for two years working at the Center for Internet Studies in the Evans School of Public Affairs. She writes, “We were given a grant from Microsoft Community Affairs to work on two research projects - one focuses on information technology training and women empowerment in Asia, Middle East and Latin America; the other one focuses on evaluation of information technology for development projects in marginalized communities in the US. I am very excited for this opportunity… Needless to say, I am deeply thankful to the Department of Communication (faculty, students, staff) for all the support during my years as a PhD student. This Department and UW will always have a special place in heart.”

Dave Domke has given a variety of talks in the past month, including: "The power of articulation: Turning values into political messages." Public community workshop, in Mount Vernon, WA (with Professor Crispin Thurlow); "The echoing press, morality, and nation: Republican dominance and Democratic opportunities." Whitman County Democratic Party, Pullman, WA;
"Religious politics, national identity, and an echoing press." Washington State
University; "The echoing press, morality, and nation: Republican dominance and Democratic opportunities." Public community talk, Seattle; "Effective lecturing." UW Collegium on Large-Class Instruction; "Evolution and Intelligent Design: Politics, communication, and science." University of Washington Young Democrats; "A crisis in trust: Why Americans no longer believe the news." University of Washington Dinner Series, UW Alumni Association; "Reclaiming the moral high ground: Bringing progressive spiritual values to the forefront of public debate." Washington Association of Churches; "The courage of higher education." Welcome to Washington lecture with parents and students, University of Washington; "The power of articulation: Going public in a media culture." Public community workshop, Astoria, OR (with Professor Crispin Thurlow). Dave also had an op ed column in the Seattle Times on March 30, 2006, "Fault lines widen between evangelicals and the GOP.” He was recently elected to a second three-year term on the Standing Committee on Research, Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.

Communication graduate student Jay Leighter will be joining the faculty in the Department of Communication Studies at Creighton University (Omaha, NE) in autumn 2006. He will be expanding the curriculum in the department in the areas of cultural and political communication as well as continuing his research on local public deliberation from the perspective of the ethnography of communication.

Valerie Manusov gave the Piersol Lecture at Texas State University-San Marcos during spring break. Her talk was titled, "From Cause to Culture: An Evolution of Research on the Meanings Given to Nonverbal Cues."

Congratulations to Deborah Bassett who has been selected to participate in the 2006 Institute on the Public Humanities for Doctoral Students, which is sponsored by the UW Graduate School and by the Simpson Center for the Humanities. The Institute will run from September 11-14.

Kathy Gill has been invited to be a program committee member for the International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM) to take place in Boulder in 2007.

Patricia Moy will soon start her second year on AAPOR Council, serving as Conference Chair for next year's meeting in Anaheim. At ICA in Dresden, she starts a two-year term as head of the Political Communication Division, and will continue as At-Large Member of the Political Communication Section of the American Political Science Association.

Patricia will also teach a four-week UW Exploration Seminar, "The Evolution and Revolution of Public Opinion," in Paris early autumn.

The City of Seattle posted a link to student Pat Jones' article from the department’s Narrative Journalist magazine (citing the Department of Communication) on its Park and Recreation home page. Deb Kaplan taught this course during winter quarter.

Gina Neff gave the keynote address on "Information at Work: Challenges and Opportunities in the Modern Workplace" at the University of Oregon's Public Employment Relations Conference on April 19. The annual conference brought together 300 public sector unionists, management, and arbitrators from state and local government to discuss to developments in public sector labor law and labor relations.

This quarter Karen Rathe’s students are working with a real-life client, Pioneer Newspapers, which owns a number of small dailies and weeklies in the western states. Its goal is to “revision” one its dailies, the Klamath Falls Herald and News. In Publication Design (COM 460-B), the class is redesigning section covers for the paper. In Community Journalism: News Lab, the students recently brainstormed ideas for a new interactive feature for the paper. Ideas included sending a daily local news-digest email to local schools and government agencies, to dating advice from both senior citizens and seniors in high school. Finally, students enrolled in an independent-study seminar are conducting research projects that look more deeply into the question of the future of the newspaper.

Bicycling to campus this month as part of a Group Health sponsored riding program are the Deadly Treadlies, a bike team that includes: Amoshaun Toft, Lisa Coutu, John Gastil, Karen Rathe, Jerry Baldasty, Gina Neff, and Michael O’Connell.

Gerry Philipsen gave the keynote address to the annual Sooner Communication Conference at the University of Oklahoma in February. This is a conference organized by and for graduate student research in communication. The keynoter is invited by the graduate students of the Department of Communication at UO. The address was titled, "Studying Communication in the Context of Community, from a Concern with Participation to a Concern with Critique."

Farewell to Si Wong who leaves us to return to Boston. We will miss his very thoughtful work.

Laura Black has accepted two academic positions for after she graduates. For the 2006-07, she will be a Post Doctoral Associate at Cornell University in the Department of Communication, teaching and working on a public deliberation research project with Dr. Katherine McComas. In 2007, she will begin as an assistant professor at Ohio University in the School of Communication Studies, which has a highly ranked PhD program. I will be teaching and researching in the area of "Relating and Organizing." Congratulations to Laura. Congratulations, too, to her husband – who also has a postdoc at Cornell and a faculty position at Ohio University (in Sociology).

The Seattle Weekly's lead news story on February 22, 2006, was on "Elephant Turf War," by UW journalism student Marisa McQuilken. Marisa, a junior, was interning at the Weekly and was a student in Deb Kaplan’s advanced reporting course in autumn quarter. The Weekly's managing editor, Chuck Taylor, said the story generated a lot of reader interest.

Mike Henderson reports that Seattle Times columnist Jerry Large has agreed to teach the Opinion Writing course in autumn. This will be four years after Jerry started our successful association with The Times. Since then we have welcomed nine Times professionals and have placed 13 student interns at the newspaper

Lisa Coutu served as director of the Large Class Collegium in late April. The Collegium is an annual event sponsored by the Teaching Academy, designed to facilitate community among instructors in large classes and to provide a space for dialogue about effective teaching strategies in the unique environment of the large class. Lisa has directed the collegium for the last two years, after being heavily involved in the planning and facilitating of the event for many years. This year, the collegium included 13 faculty participants from a wide range of teaching units (e.g., Med school, nursing, social work, communication, construction management, and others), and with a wide range of teaching experience (e.g., one year to more than 20 years). Taso Lagos, a lecturer in our own department, participated. The collegium also draws facilitators from across campus to spark discussion among the participants. David Domke led the group in a two-hour discussion of effective lecturing, a session that left many participants inspired to try new approaches to their own lectures.

Many faculty participants have reported new, successful moves in their large classes, evidence of both the need and impact of the collegium.

Jerry Baldasty helped to organize the UW Teaching Summit, bringing together colleagues who work in teaching/learning issues from the Center for Instructional Development and Research, UW Catalyst, Office of Educational Assessment, UW Libraries and the Graduate School. The goal of the meeting was to create a working group on teaching and learning issues. Jerry also chaired the UW’s Teaching Awards Committee this year as part of his work as director of Teaching Academy. He did a book reading (from his new book) May 13 at the downtown Seattle Public Library as part of library’s series “Speaking Locally: Northwest History Writers Talk About Their Work.” He was also one of the UW authors featured at a recent fund raising dinner organized by the Friends of UW Libraries. He represented the Department at the recent Graduate School’s Diversity Fellows Dinner, and visited KSTW Television to explore internship possibilities for students. He has also been named to the Advisory Committee established by former Seattle Mayor Norm Rice (and UW Communication Alumni Hall of Fame member) for a project on civic dialogue. John Gastil is also a member of the advisory committee.

Giorgia Aiello has been awarded with the University of Washington Graduate School Dissertation Fellowship for 2006-07. Giorgia will use the award during winter quarter 2007 to work on her dissertation, which is titled "Visions of Europe: The Construction of Collective Identity in Contemporary European Visual Discourse".

Taso Lagos’ students in the American Press and Politics class finished winter quarter with a "Metamorphosis Conference". Students debated critical issues in today's mediated political environment. The event allowed them to understand a dynamic yet important social process, and how all citizens today are affected by it. Taso reports, “It is hoped that the Conference also encourages them to become more actively engaged in our political life today, if not learn skills such as thinking rapidly on their feet, debating in a respectful manner and listening to opposing views. Lastly, it's a chance to showcase the elements they learned all quarter long in the class, and, hopefully, have fun in the process.”

Taso Lagos had an op ed column, “Proud to be part of ‘one people,’” in The Seattle Times, April 14, 2006.

Distinguished Alumnus

The UW Department of Communication has named Ron Chew, Executive Director of the Wing Luke Asian Museum, as its Distinguished Alumnus, 2006. The Department is honoring Chew in recognition of his many contributions to the community, and particularly for his work as editor of the International Examiner and as head of the Wing Luke Asian Museum.

Chew has a long history of community involvement, and many awards recognizing his work. He has served on the National Council on Humanities, as a board member of the Seattle Public Library Foundation and on the Advisory Board of the Museum Loan Network. He has received the Governor’s Heritage Award from the Washington State Arts Commission, the Distinguished Service Award from the National Association of Asian American Studies, the Western Museums Association’s Director’s Chair Award, and the Ford Foundation’s Leadership for a Changing World Award.

Born in Seattle, Chew began to advance the cause of Asian Americans and Seattle’s International District while still in college when he began to write for the International Examiner. Gary Iwamoto’s History of the International Examiner recounts that Chew, as editor of the paper starting in 1977, not only helped to cover Asian American issues in the community, but also worked to recruit and train community workers and students to contribute stories and photographs to the paper. Because of Chew’s leadership, the paper became “a diverse mixture of political, human interest, and cultural stories.” Chew was a founding member of both the Seattle chapter of the Asian American Journalists Association and the Northwest Minority Publishers Association.

Chew became director of the Wing Luke Asian Museum in 1991. Since then, the museum has been lauded both locally and nationally for involving community members in its exhibits and programming. As PI reporter John Iwasaki wrote in 2004, “Wing Luke is considered the nation’s only community-based museum that focuses on the history, culture, and art of all Asian/Pacific Islanders. Under Chew’s tenure, its exhibits have illuminated such topics as immigration, stereotypes, music, race and employment.” When Chew became director in 1991, the museum had a $130,000 annual budget and a $50,000 budget. Today it has an operating budget of more than $1 million and no deficit. Under Chew, the museum is in the middle of an ambitious fund-raising campaign to restore the historic East Kong-Yick building in the International District to serve as the museum’s new home.

The 5th Annual Native Voices Film Festival

The 5th Annual Native Voices Film Festival was held April 6-8 on the UW campus. This annual showcase of Native Scholarship at UW featured some wonderful films, including:

The Land Has Eyes (2004), directed by Vilsoni Hereniko.

From Mashantucket Pequot to Makah: Afro-Native identity (2006), by UW filmmaker Alicia Woods

A Century of Genocide in the Americas (2003), by UW producer Rosemary Gibbons

The Border Crossed Us (2005), by UW producer Rachael J. Nez

Half of Anything (2005, by UW producer Jonathon S. Tomhave

Spider Kid (2006) and If I never watched Oprah? (2006), with UW producer Marcella Ernest

Finding Her Now (2006), with UW producer Steffany Suttle

Running with Tradition (2001) and The Repatriator (2006), with UW producer Angelo Baca

Visitors

Recent visitors to the Communication diversity minor course being taught by David Domke and Lisa Cohen included Pat Scott, former President and CEO of Fisher Broadcasting; Margaret Larson, NBC correspondent and news anchor on the Today show, and anchor at KING and KIRO, and Florangela Davila, Seattle Times reporter.

David Zarefsky visited recently. Zarefsky, the Owen L. Coon Professor of Communication Studies at Northwestern University, is one of the world's foremost scholars on the history and criticism of U.S. public discourse, argumentation, and presidential rhetoric. Among his many publications are books on the Lincoln-Douglas debates and on the rhetoric of the war on poverty during the Johnson administration. He currently is working on the controversy surrounding the annexation of Texas during the 1840's and on the legal and political dispute following the 2000 election and culminating in the U.S. Supreme Court decision in the case of Bush v. Gore. Many thanks to Leah Ceccarelli for arranging this visit.

Ruth Teichroeb, Investigative Reporter for the Seattle P-I and Dart Fellow, and Lori Matsukawa, KING 5 Anchor and Department of Communication Alum and Hall of Fame member, spoke about the effects of covering crisis situations in the media effect course. Sue Evans, Media Relations Director at Pyramid Communications, spoke about running media campaigns.

Visitors in Meg Spratt’s class (Ethnicity, Gender and Communication ) during spring quarter have included: April Peterson (discussing domestic workers on TV), Meredith Li-Vollmer (on gender images in children's TV), Jon Tomhave (on his film Half of Anything), a group of media professionals talking about images and opportunities in sports media (Jayda Evans, Seattle Times reporter; Larry Stone, Seattle Times columnist; Gary Washburn, Seattle P-I reporter; and Elaine Thompson, AP Photographer); Assunta Ng, publisher of Northwest Asian Weekly (on the community press), Ruth Teichroeb, Seattle P-I investigative reporter (on news coverage of domestic violence).

Visitors to Jerry Baldasty’s communication history class during spring quarter have included Nhien Nguyen (editor of the International Examiner), alumnus Ron Chew (Executive Director, Wing Luke Asian Museum and former editor of the International Examiner) and alumna Mayumi Tsutakawa (Washington State Arts Commission, and former editor of the International Examiner).

Fred Willenbrock, publisher of the Newport Miner, was the Washington Newspaper Pulbishers Association editor/publisher in residence in late April. A 1974 UW Communication alumnus, Willenbrock was a member of the board of trustees of the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association from 1992-1998, and served as WNPA president of WNPA in 1996-1997. He spoke to students in our reporting and community journalism classes. Willenbrock described his commitment to community journalism in a note he sent a few weeks ago: “The story surrounding my purchase of the newspapers is worth noting. I had several established community newspaper publisher partners when I purchased The Miner. They were all independent publishers at the time and believed in the value of that independence for communities. Eventually, according to plan I bought them out. I'm now one of the only independent community newspaper publishers in north Idaho or Washington.”

Numerous alumni have come to campus to participate in the department’s Mentor Lunch series – meeting with students to talk about careers, internships, and education. Mentor Lunch speakers have included these alumni:

Harold Carr, former VP for public and corporate communications, Boeing

Suki Dardarian, an editor at the Seattle Times

Nancy Eastham, local public relations expert

Tom Cohen, former TV producer and currently a Microsoft manager, and

Dianna Brearley, a local events planner for a private bank

Other Alumni visitors have included Bill Brubaker and Rebecca Gano.

The Department hosted a reception for several alumni who were on campus to mark the 50th anniversary of their UW graduation. The 1956 alumni and spouses included Robert and Catharine Keatley, Neil and Nancy McReynolds, Doug and Charlene Ramsey, and Judy King. Representing the Department at the reception were David Sherman, Nancy Dosmann, Nancy Rivenburgh, Mike Henderson, David Domke, Karen Rathe, Meg Spratt (from the Dart Center) and Jerry Baldasty. Kristin Millis, publisher of the Daily, also attended.

UW Communication alumna Elaine Ko has been named the new executive director of the Inter*Im Community Development Association in Seattle's Chinatown International District. Ko, the association's former operations director, replaces Bob Santos, a long-time activist who retired recently. Santos was director of the International District Improvement Association. Before joining Inter*Im, Ko was a regional manager and vice president for Primerica and director of the city of Seattle's Office for Women's Rights. Inter*Im is a community development organization that advocates for Asian Pacific communities in the Puget Sound area.

Alumna Lisa Cohen

For the past three decades, UW Communication alumna Lisa Cohen has worked at all the television news stations in Seattle. She’s worked for national broadcast news outlets. She’s worked in politics and for non-profit organizations. In short, she’s done much, seen more, and understands the dynamics of mass communication in today’s media-saturated culture. Now Cohen is sharing that knowledge and experience with Department of Communication undergraduate students. As a teacher.

Cohen, a School of Communications alum (BA in 1980, MA in 1989), is co-teaching a course with Associate Professor David Domke in spring quarter. The course is titled, “Communication, Media, and Cultural Difference,” and it is focused on the processes through which varying forms of communication—particularly mass media— contribute to people’s understandings of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, ability, religion, and more.

This course is part of a new Diversity Minor in the University of Washington’s College of Arts and Sciences, launched this year. Students who complete a series of courses across several Arts and Sciences departments that delve into matters of social and cultural difference can earn a minor in this program. Domke and faculty colleagues in units such as American Ethnic Studies, History, and Women’s Studies received a UW curriculum grant to create courses for the minor.

Cohen and Domke share ideas, develop assignments, deliver lectures, work closely with students, and share grading responsibilities for the course.

“Lisa has been great,” Domke said. “The mass media are central to how people understand the world, and that influence is particularly high when we’re talking about understanding people who are different in some way. Lisa’s rich knowledge and experiences make the course ideas concrete for the students.”

Lisa is also the acting executive director of CityClub, Seattle-based civic engagement forum.

Dart Center

Roger Simpson has announced his retirement as executive director of the Dart Center, effective June 15, 2006. Simpson is the founding director of the Center, which was launched as a global resource about trauma and news coverage in 1999. He will remain on the faculty as the Dart Professor of Communication; a new staff person – to serve as executive director -- will be hired for the Center.

The Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma has announced the winners of the 2006 Dart Awards for Excellence in Reporting on Victims of Violence. The first-ever Dart Awards for radio coverage were given to the BBC, for a series about survivors of the Bosnian civil war, and PRI’s The World, for a series about survivors of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. This year’s newspaper award was given to the Lafayette, La., Daily Advertiser for a project about domestic violence.

Judges selected two entries to receive the first Dart Awards for radio coverage. “Return to Sarajevo” --produced by the BBC and syndicated on US stations—received a $7,000 prize. The winning team includes correspondent Allan Little and producers Peter Burdin and Philippa Goodrich. In the three-part series, Little and Burdin revisited Sarajevo 10 years after the Dayton Peace Agreement—and 10 years after they covered the war themselves. They revisit the scenes of some of the worst destruction, conduct new interviews with some of the people they met 10 years earlier and tell how survivors there have attempted to rebuild their lives after living through a bloody civil war.

“Hiroshima’s Survivors: The Last Generation,”by PRI’s The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston— received a $3,000 prize. This four-part series introduces listeners to some of the more-than-250,000 living survivors of the atomic bomb blast, including a woman who has only recently gone public with her memories, Korean immigrants whose status as outsiders has made their ordeal even more difficult, and Japanese-American Hiroshima survivors now living in California. The winning team includes reporter/producer Patrick Cox, editor Jennifer Goren, producer Atsuko Shigesawa and engineers Mike Wilkins, Tina Tobey, Ray Fallon, Robert O’Connell and Robin Moore.

Judges selected the Lafayette, La., Daily Advertiser to be the 13th winner of the newspaper award. The $10,000 prize was given for “The Days After,” a 16-page special section that examined the impact of domestic violence in Acadiana. The winning team includes editor Arnessa M. Garrett, photographer Claudia B. Laws, reporter Jason Brown, designer Brittain Orgeron and reporter Marsha Sills.

Judges also selected two newspaper projects for honorable mention: “What Rape?”, a four-part series in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch about a pattern in which women's complaints about sex crimes were being handled informally and not included in crime statistics; and “Lethal Impulse: Understanding Teen Suicide,” a four-part series in the Omaha World-Herald based on an analysis of death records and interviews with experts and the parents of 37 teens lost to suicide.

In the media

Seattle Times, Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Global digital divide grows wider, UW research finds
By Kristi Heim
Seattle Times business reporter

The digital divide is becoming less like a crack and more like a canyon. More computers are produced than ever before, but they're even more concentrated in rich, developed countries than 10 years ago, according to new research by the University of Washington.

"That's pretty surprising, because we expected open markets to bring technology all around the world in an even way," said Philip Howard, assistant professor of communications at UW.

He directed a team of 30 students who analyzed 10 years of data from the World Bank and other sources to compile the World Information Access 2006 Report. From 1995 to 2005, they found, the supply of computers, Internet hosts and secure servers became more narrowly distributed among a core group of countries. Mobile phones and Internet access, by contrast, proliferated to become more evenly distributed around the world.

But even for Internet access, people in developing countries pay more and get less.
While an hour of Internet access at a cybercafe costs people in New York about 6 percent of their average daily income, it costs people in Lagos, Nigeria, about 75 percent. Those in developing nations are less likely to find news and other content generated from within their countries.

"In economic and cultural terms, they are missing out in a big way," Howard said. "Going online means paying to tap into Western culture."

Researchers looked at 24 cities — each with more than 10 million people — and the cost of Internet access at three to six cybercafes, then compared those costs with average income figures. "In the rich cities, an Internet user who spends $1 actually gets more out of their experience and finds more Web sites in their language," Howard said
.
The findings lend another voice to the debate over how to bring technology to the developing world. While poorer countries tend to get computers much like hand-me-down clothing, cheaper mobile technology has spread relatively quickly.

"Most people around the world will experience new information technologies through their mobile-phone browsers," Howard said.

"Computers are still priced out of reach for most people." That leads Howard to question whether the right strategy is to build a $100 computer that links people in a network, as Massachusetts Institute of Technology is doing with its One Laptop per Child project, or a mobile phone that computes, as Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates has suggested. The infrastructure and policies of the developing world seem better suited for mobile phones, Howard says. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but think I come down on the Microsoft camp," Howard said. That is, with one caveat: He thinks the mobile devices should be based on the open-source software Linux.

The UW project also showed how the production of books and music is going online in developing countries, and how the Internet has stimulated growth of civic and charity groups there. And in some countries, such as Argentina, Brazil, Turkey and Ukraine, researchers found an especially large percentage of online news sites per capita.

Howard plans to send the report to hundreds of international development groups "to try to get the traditional World Bank policy-makers to think in more nuanced ways when they think about using technology for development," he said. Another goal is "to bring information-society big dreamers back down to Earth," he said. "Ten years after the Internet was privatized, where is the information society?"

[Download a Microsoft Word version of the May, 2006 "Communication"]